


Bound by Felfire

by TalesOfTheLee



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Allied Race, Gen, Sympathy for the Devil, Warlocks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfTheLee/pseuds/TalesOfTheLee
Summary: A work exploring life inside the Burning Legion for the Man'ari Eredar, their views on the Burning Crusade, Sargeras, Fel magic, and eventually, how they cope with the Crusade's end, and what comes after.





	Bound by Felfire

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome, I hope you enjoy the first part of this little exploratory work I've written, and I hope you continue to enjoy as it goes on. This is my first work on Ao3, although I have previously done both editing and writing work on FFNet. I will state right now that this is intending to focus entirely upon the Burning Legion and their perspective, which obviously has some rather dark subject matter, so please do be warned that while I will endeavor to never really focus on it much like the Warcraft games do, it may not be appropriate at all times for those faint of heart.
> 
> At the moment it is still very much a work in progress, but please do leave any commentary you have below and I'll get to it when I have time.
> 
> This work is intended to be canon compliant, although obviously some liberties will be taken simply to tell a better story, or to make cohesive sense. With that, I thank you all for reading and wish you a lovely day.

Chapter 1: The Ritual

“To live within the Legion, is to be in a state of total war.”  
**Doommaiden Maldirni, Portal Keeper for the Expedition to Aldrachus.**

* * *

Already they gathered around her. Demons of numerous kinds. Broad chested Felguards, wielding mighty blades and axes, garbed in only partial plates of armor. Their chests exposed, perhaps as a challenge to their foes? An intriguing prospect, she mused. They were the Legion's finest foot soldiers, but an inelegant tool at the best of times. Nearby, Wrathguards too joined the crowd, expert duelists, ready to achieve the breakthrough where Felguards could not. Martial might only, but they would serve their purpose. Spell casters could not be squandered without reason, and for this, the axe and sword would serve as well as the spell and bolt.  
  
They must have sensed as each second that trickled away, standing in a loose formation, bringing the hour of their triumph closer.

The wait was always the worst part. Not when the portal opened, and their forces would spill onto a world and begin the actual war efforts. That part was always simple in Talorni's experience; then it was training, flowing from battle to battle, supporting the foot soldiers and preparing the way for the commanders that would follow. Always with the certainty that should she or any of her men fall, she would return to Argus with time, plucked from the Twisting Nether by the Unmaker's hand. 

Once a foothold was established, the cruel arithmetic of war would eventually swing in the Legion's favor. As long as that all important beachhead was maintained, the Legion could reinforce indefinitely. It was only a matter of time. And yet, until the final moment when a portal was anchored, everything hung in the balance, with all that weight resting on her shoulders. Fel fire, dancing across her fingertips as she drew the necessary sigils to create that necessary opening. The fire paradoxically feeling like ice running in her veins; it left her feeling drained, but exhilarated. Such was the chaotic energies drawn from the Twisting Nether. Where Light and Shadow met and mingled. 

Unbidden, the memories echoed in her mind, lessons from days long past. Days that still filled her with the bitter taste of weakness, like ash on the tongue, where power felt of the finest wine. Long had she been prepared for the day she'd open her first portal, to do this service for the Legion was everything. 

“A lesser portal will suffice for simple things”, the first lesson, but a crucial one. Portals needed only a modest gift of magical power, but to open the greater portals, ones stable enough to allow the mass transportation of troops, more power was needed than what she could possibly house within her body. It was here that the delineation between Arcane and Fel magic stood in stark contrast. Arcane magic was bound to ordered processes, much like the Titans themselves had been, so she was to believe. It was volatile in its own way, and could provide for portal crafting, but Fel magic took to the art more readily. One could learn to be skilled in the Arcane magics and craft portals for utilitarian use, but without the natural sympathy Fel magic had to the art, Arcane portals would always struggle to match their chaotic counterparts.

Readily she worked through the checks her master had drilled into her mind, starting with sources of power. If she tried to compel the power within her to open such a gateway, no doubt the consequence would be immense as the Fel magics formed an inferno within her, seeking to pay the price of the spell with her own body and soul. That way lied true death. The Unmaker could not pluck her soul back if she were to be lost in the sea of roiling energy that was their home world. She did not have faith in the Light anymore, and doubted she would be welcome into its paradise when she slipped away. Too eagerly had she embraced fire and damnation.

It was intoxicating to wield magics of this sort, but it must be used with restraint. “You command the firestorm, it does not command you.” Doommaiden Maldirni had been a strict teacher, but her axioms were built upon experience. There could be no firmer foundation, and the Legion had a wealth of experience that could not be matched. 

Yet how was she to power a ritual without the required toll? Full grateful was she that in this too, the Legion would provide the answers. Soulstones, amaranth and brimming with life would be provided, no doubt harvested on dying worlds. “One life, to fuel another.”, her teacher had said, praising the tiny stones and their role as a necessary part of the gift their Lord Sargeras had given them. “It will bolster you, so you do not sputter out like used coals. Harvested so this flawed existence can be snuffed out, and reborn.”

She raised a stone, glowing with the life trapped inside, kissed it with lips cracked by magic fire's uncaring heat, before crushing it in her hand, raining flecks of amethyst dust at the center of her ritual circle. Immediately she felt invigorated, like she could challenge the Titans herself. This too was to be expected, even as her guards stood to attention, knowing that the next minute would be critical. Brutes, long since having embraced the changes brought by Sargeras gift. They were the truest example of Man'ari. “Unnatural Ones” in the Eredun tongue, unnatural, but brimming with so much possibility. Their hulking forms readied to handle any retaliation that sought to breach the portal as it was opened. As well as kill her, should she lose control of the spell. A rare possibility, but not one that was worth discounting. Magi capable of opening a gateway were not to be squandered lightly, nor was the time lost, when the stars drifted in their alignment, and the world they were due to invade became less disposed to their arrival. 

The heady feeling of the soulstone's power coursing through her was distracting, even as she worked quickly to create the necessary runes in the archway. She drew them with skill born of experience, even as the words began to come to her lips, learned from the Defiler in the earliest days of their service to the Legion. When they had taken the Burning Legion from a rabble of uncontrollable Demons to an effective fighting force, led by powerful mages, and skilled tacticians from the Eredar stock. 

“ _Azhir uval nutarus._ ” She chanted in an even voice, trying not to slip even as the power of the ritual began to grow around her. Slowly, the runes ignited as their power was activated, honing the spell craft that was to come.

“ _Azhir mudas ethanul_.” The second of the ritual's incantations, already she felt that feeling of ice clawing through her veins again as the magical power was drawn out. 

“ _Dalektharu il dask daku._ ” Halfway through, and she could feel the very fiber of the worlds begin to thin, like a cloth worn from overuse, ready to tear at her command.

_“Riftuuz e thara samanar utamus._ ” A line began to tear, like a finger width crack in a mirror's glass, at the center of the straining veil. So close she could feel the other side, calling out to her, demanding she open the world to their forces.   
  
_“Elas umanes azarathan rakas ibna._ ” The ritual reached its climax, and already did her strength wane. Too well did she know the feeling of fire burning within her breast, paying the spell's price with her own power. To linger unfinished was a death sentence, yet she struggled to form the words, her throat feeling drier than any desert on the thousands of worlds she had heard of.

_“Belanora mordanos nenaar ila mornu farlos kada.”_ At last the words came to her, almost unbidden, perhaps a gift form their dark master, or the long forgotten providence of the Light. She finished the incantation akin to an automaton, showing no emotion lest the ritual go awry. She reached out to grasp the seam between worlds, holding it between her fingers for little more than a moment, before tearing it asunder. Like grasping a blade's edge it tore at her hands, trying to right itself even still, while she pullef further ripping a gaping wound in the fabric of reality. Stretching wide before it reached its limit within the rune marked archway, fueled by the same stones she had drawn on for power. There the wound stabilized, swirling with the green energy indicative of her kinds magic, before darkening once more, an eclipse passing over that world.

A breath that she realized she had been holding, before with a war cry her brutal guardians led the charge of the Legion through the freshly opened portal to the newest world to be cleaned by the Burning Crusade. She stood in rapt concentration, sweat trickling down her brow as she fought to keep the portal held open, while another anchorite approached her ritual circle, and began her own chants. Though only minutes, inside her mind it felt like a century to maintain the roiling energies as the tear in reality threatened to knit itself back together.

She felt exhausted as she was allowed to drop her focus on the gateway, spared only a few moments to catch her breath and prepare herself for the next steps. She cast a glance at her second, a younger anchorite, whose blue skin did not have the fiery red hues of true Man'ari like she did. A new convert, likely one of the scattered Eredar who had only recently seen the folly in the Light. No doubt too inexperienced to be trusted with opening a portal herself, but powerful enough to fulfill the role of portal keeper on the safe side of the gateway. 

Even so, in that moment she felt gratitude for the inexperienced anchorite, more than she had for any soldier of the Legion who had personally guaranteed her safety, even at the cost of their, admittedly only temporary, lives. She gave a curt nod, a mark of respect, but said no words. It wouldn't do well for the young upstart to get beliefs beyond their station. 

With that, she was off, trotting on cloven feet through the portal, even as Wrathguards crowded through around her, weapons at the ready. Eager to spill blood in the Legion's name, and to take the fight to a world bathed in the Void. 

* * *

“ _Let this scar signify the first blow against the mortal world.  
From this seal shall arise the doom of men.  
Who in their arrogance, sought to wield our fire as their own.  
Blindly they build their kingdoms upon stolen knowledge and conceit.  
Now they shall be consumed by the very flame they sought to control._”   
  
Excerpts of Eredar ritual magic originally penned by Archimonde, the Defiler,  
Officially translated by Maiden Talorni at the request of the Kirin Tor.


End file.
